{"id":363218,"date":"2026-03-28T20:08:07","date_gmt":"2026-03-28T20:08:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/363218\/"},"modified":"2026-03-28T20:08:07","modified_gmt":"2026-03-28T20:08:07","slug":"ominous-surveillance-scarecrows-appearing-across-america","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/363218\/","title":{"rendered":"Ominous Surveillance “Scarecrows” Appearing Across America"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sign up to see the future, today<\/p>\n

Can\u2019t-miss innovations from the bleeding edge of science and tech<\/p>\n

Police technology is a major business in the US. Altogether, the law enforcement equipment market was valued at nearly $11.7 billion<\/a> in 2025, and as dystopian toys like self-driving squad cars<\/a> and crime fighting drone hives<\/a> make it to market, that number is set to skyrocket.<\/p>\n

A growing favorite among police departments throughout the country is the \u201ccamera on wheels\u201d platform, known as COWs for short \u2014 or \u201cscarecrows,\u201d for a more ominous moniker. While they\u2019re not quite as exciting as \u201cFallout\u201d style police robots<\/a>, COWs offer a low-effort solution to departments whose panopticon has a few blind spots.<\/p>\n

COWs are basically tiny tow-trailers with a solar panel, battery, and telescoping CCTV mast attached. They\u2019re sold by high-tech ventures such as Flock Safety<\/a> \u2014 shown below \u2014 and rented out by legacy security enterprises like Allied Universal<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

As Nile Coates, vice president of US sales at surveillance firm ECAM said in a rather uncritical interview with news outlet KTLA5<\/a>, these towers can easily plug into local police feeds via cellular networks or WiFi, bringing AI-powered facial recognition to any public or commercial location you can dream of.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur first line of defense is deterrence. We stop crimes before they start,\u201d Coates told the station. \u201cThis presence alone reduces risk, and when activity escalates, our team can dispatch directly to local guard partners as well as law enforcement.\u201d<\/p>\n

The amount of cameras deployed by these companies and their law enforcement contractors is staggering. ECAM, for example, boasts a dragnet of over 150,000 cameras, Coates bragged to the news channel.<\/p>\n

\u201cSometimes they\u2019re referred to as scarecrows because they have bright flashing lights on them, cameras, and they look kind of scary,\u201d Logan Harris, CEO of military surveillance company Spotter Global, told KTLA.<\/p>\n

Scary or not, Harris says the COWs aren\u2019t going anywhere anytime soon, as police departments, security contractors, and military agencies flood the for-profit surveillance industry with cash.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe market has spoken,\u201d the CEO told KTLA. \u201cIt\u2019s been quite amazing how fast this whole market segment has grown. Having that type of video evidence or other sensor data is really helpful.\u201d<\/p>\n

More on surveillance: The Head of the FBI Just Admitted Something Moderately Horrifying<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sign up to see the future, today Can\u2019t-miss innovations from the bleeding edge of science and tech Police…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":363219,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[345,343,344,85,46,125],"class_list":{"0":"post-363218","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-il","12":"tag-israel","13":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/363218","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=363218"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/363218\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/363219"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=363218"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=363218"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=363218"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}